1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention are applicable to interactive multimedia technology and augmented reality. Although described in embodiments as related to television (e.g., broadcast, cable, satellite, fiber), embodiments may also be applied to other media, such as the Internet and mobile devices (e.g., cellular telephones).
2. Related Art
Television commercials are a major source of income to a broadcaster; therefore, ensuring their effectiveness is imperative to maintain maximum revenue. One way to ensure the effectiveness of a commercial is to require it being watched by a certain number of viewers or certain groups of the population. This is currently being done by commercial scheduling during specific time periods and at channels that target different demographic groups. However, doing so does not guarantee viewer exposure, especially in light of recent technology that allows viewers to avoid the advertising, for example, by fast-forwarding. A measure for viewer attention is required in order to maintain the sales of television advertising time without compromising audience experience.
Interactive digital television is already a common reality, with a growing level of interactivity provided by set-top-box-hosted interactive software applications. Television interactivity presents an opportunity for service providers to obtain an immediate and quantitative feedback on products or services advertised on television directly from the consumer. Interactive applications can be designed to control interaction between television commercials and the viewers. Interactivity may promote the products, indicate the consumers' preferences, and provide the consumers with information, while minimizing interference with the program viewing experience.
Interaction with viewers through overlaid graphics, such as in Video on Demand (VoD) is a commonly accessible technology. Also, hyper-linking in a television broadcast was disclosed by Dakss et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 7,367,042, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety), and others. Dakss et al., for instance, proposes pre-processing the video content, and segmenting the image into predefined regions (products). These regions, when appearing in the video, are highlighted to indicate to the viewer an opportunity for interactivity. At this point, a viewer may press a control button to invoke an annotation tied to the highlighted region and as a result, a graphic with product-related information will be overlaid on the screen. Next, the viewer may choose to make a purchase or request more information. However, this approach to television interactivity directly depends on the original video content, where the object of interest is present at a given location in the scene when the original video is produced.